Lactase genes and evolution Points of concern Lactase

Lactase genes and evolution

Points of concern • Lactase and curriculum – General Biology course – General Microbiology – Genetics • What is the problem? – Students misconceptions

Data set Mammals 10 Bacterial Lactase 40 Small Subunit 6 Large subunit 9 Invertebrates 4 86 Fungi 6 Archaebacteria 4 Plants 7

resources • See images. ppt and. doc files for visual database of organisms from which sequences were obtained • Sequence files (. doc) are organized by type of organism and lactase subunit

Sample Questions: Level 1 • Is the bacterial lactase gene similar to the human lactase gene? • Is this gene exclusive to eukaryotic or to prokaryotic organisms? • How is this gene distributed across the organisms?

Sample Questions: Level 2 • How does the bacterial lactase gene compare to archaebacteria? • What evolution scheme can be inferred? • Describe the evolutionary relationships within and among the different groups of organisms.

Plant data

Unrooted tree for plant data

Splt Decomposition (ESTEEM module) to determine relationships between four plants based on lactase sequence

http: //www. ihop-net. org/Uni. Pub/i. HOP/

References • • • • Genoscope Centre national de séquençage http: //www. genoscope. cns. fr/externe/English/corps_anglais. html BRENDA: The Comprehensive Enzyme Information System http: //www. brenda. uni-koeln. de/index. php 4 Genomics: GLT, Systems Biology for Energy and Environment http: //genomicsgtl. energy. gov/links/archaea. shtml Genomes News Network http: //www. genomenewsnetwork. org/categories/index/genome. php? s=0&n= 15 Doe Joint Genome Institute http: //www. jgi. doe. gov/ Fungal Cell Biology Group http: //129. 215. 156. 68/index. html Ba. NG: Nematodes and Neglected Genomics http: //zeldia. cap. ed. ac. uk/index. shtml i. HOP- Information Hyperlinked over proteins http: //www. ihopnet. org/Uni. Pub/i. HOP/ European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) http: //www. ebi. ac. uk/clustalw/ National Center for Biotechnology Information http: //www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/ Biology Workbench http: //workbench. sdsc. edu/